Page 2 of Merrick: The 12 Sectors

Head down, Merrick didn’t have to look to see the commotion. He counted the number of footsteps, the distinct shouts, sorted where everyone stood. This place had taught him more about watching his back than any lesson he got out of Sector 10.

“What is this shit? Get out of my way! I want a bottle,” a new voice rose above the others.

Merrick grinned at that. A short but wide-framed alpha barreled forward, bodies flying across the room as he cleared the way to the bar to get his drink. His friend, Bezeck the Bull had entered the fray. The reason Merrick planted his ass, again, in this particular forsaken spot.

Knocking down the slumlords’ guards as indiscriminately as a wrecking ball, Bezeck cleared the way for himself. Ordering his bottle, he stood there a moment, making his own threats again, Merrick guessed.

One of the rare, honorable men in Sector 2, Bezeck hated how the slumlord treated the omega. He wanted to buy her but her master wouldn’t allow it. Bezeck made threats and challenged him. The man stood firm. His female generated enough income to fight off all offers and send a proxy into the pit to die for him as many times as necessary.

Bezeck didn’t belong here. He’d done his life right, believing in all the King’s laws until he lost his temper and killed a minor Administrator. An honorable crime in a dishonest system, Bezeck risked himself for his honor. Merrick didn’t understand it, but he could respect a male for having principles.

Bezeck fled the scene knowing no scribe would defend him. He escaped to protect his brothers and father from red-tape revenge. He’d been a rising star in the King’s army until right and wrong got in the way of his life.

They met in the pits, Bezeck boasting of watching Merrick win his battles yet feeling sorry for the overtrained youth. “That fancy foot work and your Mama’s love won’t save you with a dirty fighter who has a will to live.”

Offering to teach him how to fight properly, take him under an elder, smarter, stronger wing, Bezeck followed Merrick everywhere. Aggravated by Bezeck’s jeering catcalls when he attended Merick’s fights, he challenged the square-shaped fool to a strength match—not to the death.

Merrick won using a chokehold and pressure point.

“Now I know you need my help with such silky moves.” Bezeck declared later with a loud belly laugh.

Merrick had just woken up from a sound sleep in a recovery bed with a concussion and broken bones. He accepted the cup of clean water Bezeck handed him. Too out of his head to think, he hadn’t realized it had come with a bond of friendship. He should have told the irritating do-gooder to fuck off.

Bezeck was still trying to help broken things.

“Did you hear?” he asked. He slid his massive pack off his back and set it on the floor, before pulling out the chair opposite Merrick.

“Hear what?”

“The First Administrator’s bond-mate delivered another omega into the world. Their third girl, I believe.”

Leave it to Bezeck to say it out loud and make it real. Sasha Dover birthed her third daughter.

Bezeck watched him carefully. He knew everything. More than a few drunken nights together loosened their tongues to telling stories. Merrick had spent a lot of time jealous, angry, and grieving the loss of something he had never had. Eventually he drank enough, fought enough, to find a cold that ate the heat of all his disappointment.

Only one thing remained. His self-righteous brother’s happiness still made Merrick want to eviscerate something. It wasn’t news. He had heard and was failing at not thinking about it.

No man could ever mess up more with a female than he had. Didn’t matter that he’d stopped himself from the worst thing a man could do: rape an omega. He itched to mark her, keep her from anyone else. Her obvious potential called to him. Mesmerized him. Turned him stupid. He’d known she’d be fierce. Her future had glared him down from beautiful eyes.

“They seem very happy together.”

Happy. Happy. Happy. Fuck.

Merrick froze his expression in place. He still remembered her pure, innocent smell and what it did to his head. He wanted to protect her. The first thing in his life he’d ever wanted to shelter, and she constantly defied him. Got in the middle of his business. Embarrassed him. Shamed him in front of the human drones—the worthless sheep family she chose over him.

Not long after making his way to Sector 2, he was thumbing through newsreels on a barely working data pad when he saw the announcement. His exalted, perfect older brother had formally bonded with an omega breeder. Images of a beautiful woman, with wild, just-from-bed-hair down to her waist, wrapped in a dirty-looking sheet, standing in front of Kane who held her shoulders in his hands flashed across the screen.

She was marked up good. Black and blue from the bottom of her ears to where the sheet covered a magnificent looking pair of tits. And she was proud. Head high, shoulders back, not ashamed, or afraid.

Whenever Merrick beat a drone for incompetence, Sasha blocked the way. Always ready to take the blows in the drone’s place, determination on her round baby face. Merrick had sisters who used pouting and tears to get their way. They begged piteously at the slightest threat. Sasha only wept and begged for others.

After her maturation, Sasha looked like pictures Merrick had seen of her mother. Lips made for cock sucking, and curves that made his hands shake. He rubbed a hand over his mouth, hoping Bezeck didn’t see how it had started to water.

His father had warned him that he’d never know true self-control if he didn’t do his time in the King’s Army. The whole point of the military force was to train alphas to control their beasts so that they could work together and not destroy themselves or anyone else.

“It must be a true bond,” Merrick acknowledged. Maybe it would get his dick to wilt.

“Seems that way, don’t it? Such pretty omega babies. Have you seen?”